However, it has now announced one more chance - and has also stated that there is double the reward opportunity with a total of $2 million in rewards on offer to devs for submitting apps.

According to Lou Gazzola:

You can build/port apps using any one of the development languages that supports BlackBerry 10. Port from Android, use HTML5, Native C/C++, AIR, jQuery, Marmalade, Qt, PhoneGap, Appcelerator, Sencha and more. Additionally, apps created using BlackBerry App Generator are also eligible. (Note: you need to own the blog content to be eligible).

As with previous Port-A-Thons, the more apps you port, the more you can hope to receive. The rubric states:

Port one or more approved apps and you'll receive $100 per eligible app, to a maximum of 20 paid applications per Vendor.

Additionally, submit five (5) or more apps and be entered into a random draw for one (1) of two hundred and fifty (250) BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha devices. You'll receive one (1) entry for the first five (5) approved apps and an additional entry for each approved app after that.

Of course, you only obtain these rewards if you app gets through the selection process for the Blackberry World store. But given that RIM is aiming to have at least 70,000 apps available by the launch of Blackberry 10 on January 30 this is its last big hope of making its target.

The Last Chance Port-A-Thon is a virtual event scheduled to start at noon ET on January 18, 2013 and run for 36 hours. If you've not joined in a previous event and are tempted to join in, you need to both register as a Vendor at BlackBerry World and register for the event. Also take note that it is only apps that are submitted during the time frame 12:00:01 pm on January 18, 2013 to 11:59:59 pm ET on January 19, 2013 that are eligible.

Staff and students at the University of Bristol, England have built a giant, fully operational 16-bit computer as "an ultimate teaching tool" for an undergraduate course on computer architecture. [ ... ]